Mac minis

[dave2010]

Does anyone here use a Mac mini, either for audio or other reasons?

On another thread Webby/Lee spotted this http://www.solutions-inc.co.uk/index.php/store/mac-computers/1868-apple-mac-mini-24ghz-intel-core-2-duo-320gb-was-p64900 - but that's last year's model, allbeit at a good price.

I have been wondering whether to buy either one of the older models, or the latest model, which is considerably more powerful. Does the earlier model have the HDMI interface, or only the new one?

The criticism of the new one is that it doesn't have a CD/DVD drive, but that may not matter depending on what one uses these things for.

Sorry if this isn't the best place to post this - it could go in AV as well, but my main interest is in music. However such a gizmo could also be used to drive my LCD TV as a computer, and might provide a better interface to some applications (e.g TV catchup, video streaming) than some other dedicated, but less flexible machines. I could presumably use it to stream video as well as audio, though that might challenge my current network.

If not a Mac mini, are there other small units which could provide useful functionality for audio enthusiasts? The mini does have the merit of being more or less a full blooded computer, and it's small enough to hide behind the TV.

[Werner Berghofer]

Dave,


Does anyone here use a Mac mini, either for audio or other reasons?

I use two Mac minis both for audio and my work – I’m a self-employed typesetter, graphic designer and occasional software trainer.

http://www.berghofer.com/photos/gear/desk4.jpg

The Mac mini on my desk (late 2008 model) uses an 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and is equipped with 3 GB RAM, the older one is a G4 with 1 GB RAM. The G4 model is used as the central music and fax server in my home.


Does the earlier model have the HDMI interface, or only the new one?

The Mac mini before the recent model also offered an HDMI interface. For a complete reference of the various Mac mini models I suggest to visit the site Apple History (http://www.apple-history.com/).

It’s a reliable, powerful computer for a very good price. Personally I think I wouldn’t be happy with the latest model, because I would miss the built-in optical drive which I use to rip audio CDs and to write DVDs to deliver data to my customers (usually publishing houses) after finishing a book production.

Werner.

[Yomanze]

I think Apple just unknowingly killed the popularity of using Mac Minis as music servers. I know they're trying to make a statement like they did with removing floppy drives from the original iMac, but removing the optical drive is a dumb move IMO. Yes you can use an external drive, but that sort of defeats the object of having a small, dedicated box to rip & play your computer audio files.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

I use an acer r3610 and an external DVD drive

[Werner Berghofer]

Neil,


removing the optical drive is a dumb move IMO

I think with this move Apple tries to direct even more of its customers to the iTunes store and some future cloud services for purchasing music, movies and other media. Now if real lossless audio downloads were available and the average Internet download speed would increase also in rural regions I certainly would not by audio CDs anymore.

After ripping a purchased audio CD and reading the booklet all of my CDs collect dust in the shelf. I don’t need them anymore, since I use my computers exclusively for playback.

Werner.

[Beechwoods]

I have a mid 2010 Unibody Mac Mini which I use as a Digital Audio Workstation and for general Internet stuff. It has a 2ghz Dual Core processor and runs Lion nicely. Mine has a DVD-RW drive. I maxed the RAM to 8Gb and it runs flawlessly. I couldn't recommend it more, but I'm not sure how it compares to the latest models. You can also check everymac.com for specs on all Apple hardware.

[dave2010]

After ripping a purchased audio CD and reading the booklet all of my CDs collect dust in the shelf. I don’t need them anymore, since I use my computers exclusively for playback.
Werner.
Werner

What kind of download speeds do you get in your part of the world? Here in the UK many of us are "only" getting about 4 Mbps, which in 2002/3 would have been thought of as "supersonic". In rural areas the download speeds can be lower - there are still people who are struggling to get over 1 Mbps. On the other hand, those who work in offices for some organisations may be used to much higher data rates. At work many downloads are really fast, probably 10 mBytes per second, i.e 80 Mbps, maybe more. "Pipes" into large organisations must surely be operating at 2+ Gbps now. 10 years ago many were only in the 2-35 Mbps range.

Just to give an example, here is a recent bargain download from Amazon UK which I am considering - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wagner-Great-Operas-Bayreuth-Festival/dp/B001RTYRZM/ref=sr_shvl_album_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1312290879&sr=301-3 That's 33 CD fulls. I am scared to buy it though, as I don't know how long I've got to download it once I hit the buy button. In compressed format I think it's going to take days unless I do it at work, and if it were flac it would take even longer.

In the long term though, maybe downloads will be the way to go, but for the moment I'd probably rather have the CDs and rip. Note, however, that the bargain I pointed out costs over £200 on CDs.

[webby]

I think Apple just unknowingly killed the popularity of using Mac Minis as music servers. I know they're trying to make a statement like they did with removing floppy drives from the original iMac, but removing the optical drive is a dumb move IMO. Yes you can use an external drive, but that sort of defeats the object of having a small, dedicated box to rip & play your computer audio files.

I thought that too, but I came around to Apple's thinking. Why give over precious space to a part that maybe won't be used at all by some (I'm sure there are some users who don't use the drive), or used for only a small % of the time?

There's Werner's point about Apple pointing music buyers to the iTunes store too.

[Werner Berghofer]

Dave,


What kind of download speeds do you get in your part of the world?

this really depends on your network provider. Due to technical reasons in my home here in a small village I get between 2.8 and 3 Mbps. The next village is connected to the UPC broadband network, and the download speed available there in average is at least ten times faster as in my home. Hall in Tirol, the next small town, is equipped with a state of the art glassfiber network where even much higher speed is available, but unfortunately the glassfiber network ends just a few hundred metres from my home.

Werner.

[dave2010]

Dave,
this really depends on your provider. Due to technical reasons in my home here in a small village I get between 2.8 and 3 Mbps. The next village is connected to the UPC broadband network, and the download speed available there in average is at least ten times as fast as in my home. Hall in Tirol, the next small town, is equipped with a state of the art glassfiber network where even much higher speed is available, but unfortunately the glassfiber network ends just a few hundred metres from my home.

Werner.Rates we can only dream of here in the UK i'm afraid! We can beat your 3 Mbps, but 10 times that and more, no way! That's even in the centre of London. I hear that South Korea is good, though I don't want to live there.

[lovejoy]

It certainly pays to do your homework when it comes to ISPs.

My parents were with Demon for years - They live in a medium sized village in South Wales, about 15 miles north of Cardiff. Demon was good and reliable and they generally got around 2Mbps download speeds. Then Demon started pushing up prices and their customer service went downhill so they changed to O2. All of a sudden they were up to 7-8Mbps on the same old BT line they'd always used. I guess it's all down to contention ratios.

If you're in a Virgin cable equipped area then I can't recommend them enough. I've just decided to step up a level on their broadband and I'm getting damn near 20Mbps, for a measley £3/pm extra.

[colinB]

O2 and virgin are the best in central london too, easily better than Sky or BT.

[colinB]

I think Apple just unknowingly killed the popularity of using Mac Minis as music servers. I know they're trying to make a statement like they did with removing floppy drives from the original iMac, but removing the optical drive is a dumb move IMO. Yes you can use an external drive, but that sort of defeats the object of having a small, dedicated box to rip & play your computer audio files.

Agree. always fancied a mini but not now.
Apple tv appealed also but now its stream only :scratch: The future i guess.

[Yomanze]

People do things like watch DVDs through a Mac Mini connected to their telly and it is widely used as an entertainment hub. For me it means the optical should stay for now.


Agree. always fancied a mini but not now.
Apple tv appealed also but now its stream only :scratch: The future i guess.

I was looking at a Mac Mini too until I saw the Vortexbox music server (under $400USD for the 1TB version):

http://vortexbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/vortexbox-small.jpg

http://vortexbox.org/buy/

[sburrell]

Hey Dave,
As my sig implies I was considering the new Mac Mini for the same purposes as you, though I've put it on hold just now as I can foresee my expenses rising in the short- to medium-term.
If you want a good review of the new Mac Minis, see here:
http://www.macminicolo.net/macmini2011
I too was concerned at the sudden lack of an optical drive, but I knew that Apple used CD/DVD Drive Sharing for the MacBookAir, so assumed that this would also be available for the new Minis - I was right (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1777?viewlocale=en_US) (works with Windows XP SP2, Vista & 7):

You can then share CDs or DVDs from your Mac or PC to your MacBook Air or Mac mini via your network.
It's fast enough (network depending---mine's 802.11n, YMMV) that you can put a DVD in your remote computer's optical drive, but watch the DVD movie itself through the Mac Mini and its connected display. This has been confirmed with AppleCare.

I think the next big thing about the Mac Mini 2011 models is the inclusion of Thunderbolt, which opens it up to a great deal more expansion than the prior models. In this case, it gives you two, independent, HD-quality (or better) A/V digital outputs---HDMI & Thunderbolt. Couple this with the built-in optical output and you've got a formidable source---run video on two independent screens at 1920x1200 & 2560x1600 respectively and a separate audio-only feed over optical. And because Apple have an exclusivity deal with Intel for a year, Apple's Thunderbolt implementation has the edge.

If you really have to get an external optical drive for the Mac Mini, it's compatible with the MacBookAir Superdrive, which runs entirely over USB, including power.

Finally, any purchase of a current Apple computer allows you to install iLife '11 and Lion on any current or subsequent Apple computer that you own for free---bargain!

I like Apple's products---can you tell? :eyebrows:

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot: the removal of the optical drive has been confirmed to leave a slot where you can internally fit a second SATA HDD. The only thing missing is the appropriate cable.

[dave2010]

Simon

Re Lion and iLife11, are they worth having? I've read both good and bad things about these. Some people seem to be regretting migrating from Snow Leopard. As usual, others are claiming they're the best thing since sliced bread. If Lion really is problematic, could the new machine run Snow Leopard?

I expect any problems will be fixed fairly soon- hope so.

[Beechwoods]

I've had no problems at all with Lion. To be honest, I was surprised at how smooth the upgrades were. I did one machine from Snow Leopard to Lion, and another a clean install onto a wiped drive for my laptop that had been running Leopard. Used Migration Assistant to restore all my user data and configuration from my Time Machine backup.

Only thing to bear in mind is that Lion is the first OSX version to cease support for PowerPC applications (no Rosetta), so it's worth checking if you rely on any PowerPC only apps. Bearing in mind it was about 2006 that Apple moved to Intel, most developers will now have upgraded their stuff to Universal Binaries at least, if not Intel only anyway. I had to upgrade Graphics Converter, but that was it :) Painless :)

[sburrell]

Lion's been very well received. There're the usual teething and learning curve problems, but these don't tend to last beyond the first point update (Ie. 10.7.1) which must be close to release given 10.7.2 is already seeded to devs.

Otherwise, what Nick said.

[allsorts]

I have a 2009? 2.26ghz macmini which i bought off ebay here in Oz. Upgraded to Snow leopard, installed a 640gb hard drive and 8gb ram myself after looking at ifixit site and I'm no handyman. The mini is silent when running and uses very little power (system is using 27watts if my power thingy is to be believed). I control it remotely using an iPod Touch. In use with Audirvana ( a free music player) playing iTunes AIFF rips via the mini optical out to the Caiman and Bantam Gold. Getting a separate cd burner seems to be defeating the original intention of the macmini box though one school of thought holds that you can get a better burner than the one that came with the mini.
Newer minis also have the power supply inside box which some people seem to think detracts from output. I haven't heard the newer models though. It can be attached to my tv via a" mini dvi to hdmi" cable for playing/recording video or for easy viewing when editing my iTunes music collection.Can only say its easy to use, once cds are ripped, cheap to run, good enough to my ears and stays fairly cool which is a consideration during our hot summer days. Can't envisage ever using another system. Just have it backed up to a good harddrive using something like Carbon Cloner. If you use firewire to connect it will even make the backup a bootable drive if the mini ever fails. Perfect solution for my needs. YMMV

[sburrell]

Yeah, that's one thing you certainly don't get with Windows XP nor with Windows Vista/7, I believe - the ability to boot from a clone on an external drive should the main one go kablooie. Carbon Copy Cloner is my choice of cloner also, and it's never failed me yet.

Also, I do believe that the Mac Mini may defeat the dedicated multimedia box suggested earlier in the thread in terms of wattage - the Mac Mini really is remarkably power efficient. I mean, it has to be if you're considering leaving it on 24/7, like I am, and the energy bills are going up by 20%.

Dave, if you know someone who's a student at a British university, then I'd encourage you to finagle a Mac Mini purchase using their Apple Student Discount - shaves a nice chunk off the RRP and you get the extended AppleCare for about 20% of normal.

[Beechwoods]

If you use firewire to connect it will even make the backup a bootable drive if the mini ever fails. Perfect solution for my needs. YMMV

Both my machines boot from USB as well. It's a while since Apple removed the 'Firewire only' requirement on boot drives - since they removed Firewire ports from most of their consumer laptops strangely enough :rolleyes:

[webby]

I've had no problems at all with Lion. To be honest, I was surprised at how smooth the upgrades were. I did one machine from Snow Leopard to Lion, and another a clean install onto a wiped drive for my laptop that had been running Leopard. Used Migration Assistant to restore all my user data and configuration from my Time Machine backup.

Only thing to bear in mind is that Lion is the first OSX version to cease support for PowerPC applications (no Rosetta), so it's worth checking if you rely on any PowerPC only apps. Bearing in mind it was about 2006 that Apple moved to Intel, most developers will now have upgraded their stuff to Universal Binaries at least, if not Intel only anyway. I had to upgrade Graphics Converter, but that was it :) Painless :)
If you're using ms office for mac 2008, it will work fine in lion, but, if you need to reinstall it or install it on another mac, it won't work because the installer is a PPC app! Office 2004 is totally PPC, and 2011 is intel.

Apparently some of the adobe apps have a problem with lion.

[Beechwoods]

That's hilarious! Good old Microsoft Office!

[Alan]

I'm using a mini 3.1, which is 2009 with the 2.27 core 2 duo processor. I store my music as AIFF on a NAS which I like to hook up over ethernet. Playback is through Decibel. I have 8gb of RAM waiting to be installed and I need to get an SSD, probably from OCZ. All this goes through a Young DAC over async USB.

I have to say I am very pleased with my mini, and on sound quality terms I wholeheartedly recommend it highly. Be warned though, they are not really a plug and play solution, as optimising them takes fiddling, there are periodic updates, and a myriad of options on everything from hardware upgrades and music players to ripping software and what format to play - lets not forget backups for your precious files.

Having said that, I sold my Pioneer stable platter transport as it could not compete, poor thing.

The mini itself is great, runs silent and cool and uses almost no energy. One thing though, theres no need to leave it on 24/7, as it can be put to sleep instantly and it wakes instantly too. You just need to go through finder to find the external drive again. The Snow Leopard OS was so stable I never switched the mini off for 6 months.

There are conflicting reports about Lion on Computer Audiophile, many say its great, others feel differently. It does seem to be system resource hungry as Windows 7 is, but whether that matters is another discussion. I have stuck with SL for then short term.

The main drawback with the mini and similar solutions is they are designed to do so many things, ie they are full computers. While its great to have a computer with the tv as monitor, and a lovely aluminium bluetooth keyboard and glass topped mouse, this is all icing on the cake. Id like to see a simpler pared down music (perhaps dvd also) only solution that just does what I want without all the tweakery and optimisation. They might not sell many, but there would ba an audio market. It would need to be relly to get folks away from their minis though.

[Werner Berghofer]

Alan,


They might not sell many

since their first introduction the various Mac mini systems have sold better than sliced bread.

Werner.

[Alan]

Bread isnt much good at playing music though, is it?

my apologies Werner, I kmow as you do the McMini has sold well, it is the pared down music server I would like to see bought to market that wouldnt sell well, partly because it need to be very good to get us away from our minis.

[Werner Berghofer]

Alan,


Bread isnt much good at playing music though, is it?

yes, now I see :-) My apologies for replying like a complete idiot.

Werner.

[dave2010]

Money must be burning a hole in my pocket. Older Mac minis (even G4 ones) still seem to fetch quite a high price on eBay, considering. Last year's model, with the DVD/CD drive seems reasonable enough at the cheapish price already pointed out, but against that the latest model does seem to be much more powerful.

As far as I can see, a fully specced Mac Mini (i7, plus all the extras - 8Gbyte etc.) wouldn't cost much more than £1k, and even with a slightly lower clock speed than my iMac, should actually be more powerful. My iMac is an Intel Core Duo - it does most things very well, apart from playback of some high resolution video taken on our cameras. [I found a fix though, which is to recode the videos using handbrake, and the stuttering vanishes ....]

With the HDMI outputs on the new and previous models, it should be possible to drive TVs with files fed from a server via my LAN, and this could be an attractive option. I'm guessing that the TV could function as a display for control and setup purposes, or maybe the Mac minis can be controlled from other machines on the network. However that's done, use of such should give much snappier results for iPlayer than some of the interfaces via Freesat, Blu Ray or DVD players surely?

Having said that, for occasional use, would a Macbook Air also serve a similar purpose, or is the Air so much less powerful that it wouldn't be up to the job?
Obviously the Air would be much less likely to be left in a system, as intended for mobile use, but could be used to drive an audio or video system occasionally. Presumably an Air can play back videos and audio material without too many problems.

I fear I am tempted to buy one of each. I won't even mention the new Macbook Pros (other than this) in this post.

[allsorts]

Alan, have you deleted any applications or turned off spotlight etc to put the OS on a diet? I've tried to reduce Snow leopard on my 2.26Mini as much as i can and use Aurdivana in a hog mode with most of my 8gb ram allocated to it. This has really improved the sound quality for me. I stopped upgrading itunes at V9.something. Upgrades seem more to do with apple making money from its store and selling ipads/iphone apps than improving sound quality. I've stopped at 10.6.6 because i couldn't see any purpose in a bloated 477mb upgrade that basically was about getting it ready for Lion. Happy with what i have and getting more listening time.

[Alan]

Hi Greg,

I did scour Computer Audiophile one time & collect all the tips I could for trimming Snow Leopard down - I can't quite remember what I did now, but spotlight is certainly off.

I have 8GB RAM to go in, I will get a small SSD as well shortly - perhaps when I move I'll get my 'MAC mate' to fit it all & do a fresh install. I can then carefully go through it again to make sure I get it right.

I didn't delete any applications yet as I still use the browser etc to watch uTube etc on the TV.

I also love hog made (in Decibel, though I must admit the later versions of Audirvana sounded equally good to me), but my DAC wont let me take advantage of Integer output.

[webby]

Sorry, but why are you deleting applications?

[Alan]

Hi Lee,

I haven't deleted any applications myself, just switched a few things off. The basic idea as expressed to me is to stop the computer doing anything other than running the music player programme. Seeing as how this is such a low demand task anyway I can't really see how switching things off would make much of a difference, but in principle I can see it might be good practice.

Some people go to real lengths pursuing a stripped down OS - have you seen the service offered by Mach2music?

My mini is only in use as a music server, so I don't mind losing some functionality in the pursuit of better SQ. I don't know if what I did really made much difference as I didn't have the DAC I have now, but for the sake of a half hour messing around I am quite content.

[webby]

Mach2music? No, and I don't care to look.

As far as I'm concerned, if your mac is in good order and you have a decent amount of ram then you're fine. As long as you're not running dozens of apps or running very processor intensive apps like video or image editors.

[webby]

Re mach2music, well I did look and well, it's just beyond ridiculous IMO.

[Alan]

Couldn't resist rubber-necking then?:lol: I agree, it seems quite ridiculous.

[dave2010]

Does anyone run their Mac mini remotely, across a network? I'm thinking of getting a new one, and tucking it somewhere behind the TV and/or amplifier stuff, with an ethernet link. I'm guessing that it could be controlled in a few ways:

1. using the TV as a monitor - I do have a wireless keyboard, mouse and trackpad

2. using another display - but don't really want to do this as trying to avoid clutter

3. from another PC or iMac via the LAN network.

Anyone care to share experiences?

[Alan]

Very simple to control the mini remotely if you have another mac. I have a friend with a macbook as his music server. He runs a little programme that keeps it running with the lid shut & controls everything via his macbook air.

[Werner Berghofer]

Dave,


Does anyone run their Mac mini remotely, across a network?

yes, I use a Mac mini G4 (2005) as music and fax server. After the initial setup, display and keyboard can be removed and the machine works in headless mode. It can be remotely controlled from another Mac or PC via screen and keyboard sharing, which is a standard feature in Mac OS X.

If you own an iPhone, it also can be used as remote control for iTunes running on a Mac in the same network.

Werner.

[Beechwoods]

I remote desktop / use 'screen sharing' from my laptop to desktop all the time. And my iPhone (using the iTeleport app) - it works perfectly. My laptop is wi-fi connected, the desktop uses homeplug / Ethernet.

Much recommended and very simple to set up.

[dave2010]

Nick
I remote desktop / use 'screen sharing' from my laptop to desktop all the time. And my iPhone (using the iTeleport app) - it works perfectly. My laptop is wi-fi connected, the desktop uses homeplug / Ethernet.

Much recommended and very simple to set up.
How fast is the iTeleport app? I have the Wyse Pocket Cloud application installed, and it does the job, but heck - is it slow!

Wired connections from one fast machine to another may work better though.

My application could be wired or wireless. Like you I use Powerline/Homeplug (currently Zyxel) units for connection (because of neatness), but I could run ethernet cable round to some locations.

Currently dithering between "lashing" out on cheap G4 mini from ebay (there seem to be plenty around) or just going for a new one from the Apple store. If the latter, I'd perhaps go for broke and get a really high spec one, though financial turmoil might put that back.

[Alan]

Dave, Hi.

if you get a second-hand Mini (or any Mac) make sure you get one with an Intel processor, or you will be very - and incresingly - limited with what programmes you can run, not to mention the new operating system.

All the G4 Macs, or at least the vast majority, have PPC processors.

[dave2010]

Alan

I am aware of the G4 PPC issue, but they tend to sell for much lower prices. I wouldn't want to spend a lot on them, but if such a device could be used to run a music server that'd be good. Perhaps they don't have enough oomph to do video, though. You are right about the Intel models, and there I'd either pickup one of last year's models (new if possible) because of the CD/DVD drive, or just go for the latest models, because they clearly have the best CPU performance.

However the CPU performance might well be overkill just for music, but could be very good for video, including HD video. Also, the last two models have the power supply built in (probably a good thing - neater, more convenient) and HDMI. I may shelve this idea for a while now - it's probably not urgent by any means. I could even wait for next year's model, which I'd expect to be even faster.

[mwheelerk]

I have an iMac that use to house my library but now is simply my general purpose computer, a Mac Mini which is my music server, an iPad with the Remote app and an iPod. My general computer use is fairly routine and with the Mac Mini and iPad combo I don't know if I have a need for and probably would not replace the iMac.

I love the Mac Mini in my audio system.

[Werner Berghofer]

Dave,


I am aware of the G4 PPC issue, but they tend to sell for much lower prices

if you plan to use it only for audio playback with iTunes, a G4 with 1 MB RAM is pretty sufficient. I recommend Mac OS X 10.4.11 and iTunes 9.2.1 (this is the latest version for G4 machines). In my opinion Mac OS X 10.5 is not required for a G4 based music server: there are better ways to backup a digitial audio library than using Time Machine (which was introduced with Mac OS X 10.5), and in the worst case a plain iTunes music server is re-installed and setup in approximately 30 minutes.

However, I do not recommend torturing a G4 Mac Mini with anything related to video recording and playback.

Werner.

[dave2010]

I have an iMac that use to house my library but now is simply my general purpose computer, a Mac Mini which is my music server, an iPad with the Remote app and an iPod. My general computer use is fairly routine and with the Mac Mini and iPad combo I don't know if I have a need for and probably would not replace the iMac.

I love the Mac Mini in my audio system.Which Mac Mini do you use?

I was thinking of getting a fairly high end new one, and running all my audio and video on it. It might even be able to play iPlayer (something we have in the UK) and some high definition camera videos without stuttering into our TV, so as such it might turn out to be a good thing. We can do iPlayer already, but most of the devices we have are just dreadfully slow - Freesat box, Blu Ray, Wii etc., with some fairly painful interfaces. On the other hand, for just playing around, as Werner has pointed out, a G4 might do the job just as well for audio. Since my shares have taken a dive (no, I'm not a rich b****, just not absolutely destitute ...) I may have to shelve buying new stuff for a little while.